It was double the number of people that go to even the biggest football games or indoor concerts.

Yet the establishment media was virtually absent.

WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah has joined with Media Research Center and more than 20 pro-life groups in denouncing the establishment TV networks for failing to cover this year’s March for Life, held last week.

According to MRC, CBS was the only major broadcast network that covered the march – and the coverage was limited to 15 seconds during a discussion of moderate Republican opposition to the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

In the meantime, NBC, ABC and Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo did not mention the march at all.

“It’s not surprising when the big media ignore large gatherings in Washington – year after year – of hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists, but it is unprofessional and betrays their absolute bias,” Farah said.

Other organizations that have joined MRC in condemning the establishment media include the Catholic League, Liberty Council, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, Concerned Women for America and Human Life International.

Troy Newman, co-author of “Abortion Free: Your Manual for Building a Pro-Life America One Community at a Time,” said he thinks the media are trying to protect a certain narrative about abortion.

“The March for Life is the largest annual civil rights march in the world,” Newman told WND. “For the national media to acknowledge this fact would contradict their premise that 1) abortion is a good thing; 2) the country is firmly pro-abortion; and 3) the pro-lifers are a small, insignificant group of religious extremists.”

Newman is president of Operation Rescue and a member of the MRC coalition, continued.

“In my humble opinion, the media is an extension of the far left – it reports only the approved propaganda and ignores the obvious truths. George Orwell’s ’1984′ has come to life in 2015 – the national media is the ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

Farah agreed that the media are becoming Orwellian.

“As a journalist, senior newspaper executive and media entrepreneur for more than 35 years, I’m genuinely ashamed at what my industry has become,” Farah said. “Not only do they avoid debate and discussion of the sanctity of life, they seek to distort the issue by hiding gatherings with the vigor one would expect only in a totalitarian, closed society with a government-controlled media.”

MRC President Brent Bozell did not hold back, blasting the media for their lack of coverage.

“If these were a few dozen hipsters protesting corporate profits while taking selfies with iPhones, the networks would have wall-to-wall coverage,” Bozell said. “The media cannot be bothered to cover 200,000 pro-lifers who came to Washington in the middle of winter to march for the unborn.

“It’s shameful. If you’re throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, the media will provide sympathetic coverage to your cause,” he said. “If you’re standing up for the most vulnerable in our society, the media turn a deaf ear. With each passing day, the media continue to hemorrhage their credibility.”

Instead of covering the march, the major TV networks devoted time to the New England Patriots’ “Deflategate” controversy, sidecar dogs in America and Prince Andrew’s sex scandal, according to MRC.

David Kupelian, WND’s managing editor and the driving force behind the monthly news magazine “Whistleblower,” said: “The big media have been shunning pro-lifers for decades. I remember reporting back in 1989 how the Washington Post devoted a dozen stories to a major pro-choice demonstration in D.C., even providing a map and directions to the upcoming rally. But a year later, the gargantuan ‘Rally for Life ’90,’ which attracted approximately 350,000 according to aerial photos, was graced with one 13-inch story and one photo on page B3.”

At the time, Richard Harwood, the Post’s ombudsman, wrote about the non-coverage this way:

[The pro-life event] stirred no juices at the Post. Many editors were unaware it was taking place … Journalists here, [managing editor Leonard] Downie thinks, not only are not part of the anti-abortion movement, but don’t know anyone who is. The movement is seen as one of those “fundamentalist,” “fringe” things somewhere out there in Middle America or Dixie. Those are not the circles in which we travel or from which we draw intellectual nourishment. As one of last weekend’s editors put it: ‘I didn’t even know this was anything important.